Tuesday, April 10, 2007

The departure of associate coach Barry Smith, who will coach St. Petersburg in the Russian league next season, from the Phoenix Coyotes is only the beginning of a series of moves the struggling National Hockey League club will make in the off-season.

According a source, the Coyotes soon will reassign general manager Mike Barnett and possibly replace him with Wayne Gretzky. Does this mean Gretzky will step away from behind the bench?

Yikes. I wholeheartedly endorse any move that dumps Barnett from the GM post, but the last thing I'd advocate for Gretzky was for him to take on even more responsibility in light of how his first two years behind the bench have gone.

I don't know exactly what the connection was there, other than perhaps Gretzky being familiar with Smith's work in Detroit, but Wayne requested that he join his staff when he first decided to step behind the bench. I remember last year, too, there was talk Smith may leave the team and Wayne talked about how he hoped to have him back.

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About Me

James has covered the NHL and the game of hockey since 2004, beginning with this website and continuing with The Globe and Mail (2008-16) and The Athletic. He is a member of the Professional Hockey Writers' Association, a long-time radio analyst with TSN and was the NHL network manager at SB Nation from 2008 to 2010. A graduate of Thompson Rivers and Ryerson universities, James grew up in Kamloops, B.C. as a season ticket holder in the Blazers' glory years.

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